WordPress powers millions of sites around the world, which makes it a target for malicious attacks by hackers.

In early 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to a worldwide brute force attack.

These attacks were caused by infected computer networks programmed to attack other computers (called “botnets”).

How To Protect Your WordPress Site From A Brute-Force Attack

What Are Brute Force Attacks?

A brute-force attack is a technique used to break an encryption or authentication system by trying all possibilities.

(Source: Chinese University Of Hong Kong)

There are many ways hackers try to break into a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. To do this, hackers use scripts and tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using obvious login details, your site can be easily hacked by persistent attempts to guess your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute force” login attack.

What Are Botnets

A botnet is a number of Internet-connected computers communicating with other similar machines in an effort to complete repetitive tasks and objectives. This can be as mundane as keeping control of an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel, or it could be used to send spam email or participate in distributed denial-of-service attacks. The word botnet is a combination of the words robot and network.

(Source: Wikipedia)

A “Botnet” is a network of private computers that have been infected with malicious code or software, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are often used to send out mass spam emails from computers of compromised user accounts.

The screenshot below was taken from an internet security monitoring site showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009 …

(ZeuS is a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009. Source: SecureList.com)

These were well organized and highly distributed attacks on WordPress sites. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of webhosting companies in the initial attack alone, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user admin areas. The worldwide brute force attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked per day.

News of this worldwide brute force attack was reported by all the major webhosting companiesand leading technology media publications, such as TechNews Daily, Forbes, BBC News, Tech Crunch, PC Magazine, and even on the official US Department of Homeland Security website …

(Powering millions of sites worldwide makes WordPress an obvious target for hacking attacks)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

No. In fact, there are many great reasons why you should continue using WordPress if you are concerned at all about website security.

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites in this article: How Secure Is WordPress?

It’s important to understand that, in the case of the worldwide brute force botnet attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other web applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, said this about the brute force attacks:

It is a “simple” script that attempts to login using the admin login and a generated password. So if your password is too short or based on dictionary words it will be guessed and then the script can login legitimately and do whatever it wants including installing scripts (as plugins) or editing files. The attack tries to guess your password, if it succeeds, the most secure site in the world is wide open because they have your password.

(MikeLittle.org)

Preventing Your WordPress Site From Being Brute-Force Attacked – Ten Security Measures

Every website with a security vulnerability provides some value opportunity to hackers. A vulnerable website offers malicious users with a valuable platform for launching denial of service attacks, spreading malware and as a source of information theft.

If someone can access and remotely control your website or blog, your site can then be employed as a “bot” to attack more highly-valued sites.

Additional undesirable effects of being hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by Google, having spammy links advertising things like casinos, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted into your content, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasties.

The harsh reality is that brute-force software bots are trying to hack into your site as you are reading this page at this very moment. Whether they can be successful will depend on how challenging you have made it for them to continue trying until they discover a way to get in, or decide to look for a more vulnerable target.

How Much Information Are You Broadcasting To Hackers About Your WordPress Site?

If you visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security check …

(WordPress Security Check Screenshot source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the test will yield a number of results and details about your site …

(website security scan results. Screenshot: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the tool shown above that if you can access all of this information about your site, hackers can too.

(Screenshot image: Blog Defender)

The ability to see what version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed on your site, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories in your site are all potentially useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about any potential security vulnerabilities, especially where the owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you are not preventive steps to harden your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your installation, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

Whenever a website is hacked, webmasters will find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been interfered with or even entirely wiped out. Often, sites will become infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache of having your web site being hacked into, we have listed below ten essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from brute-force botnet attacks.

Note: Some of the recommended steps shown below require some technical skills to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you have no web coding skills, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Web Host

Contact your hosting provider and ask them exactly what security precautions they have put in place to help prevent your site from brute-force attacks, and what they do to make sure that your WordPress sites get regularly backed up.

Make sure that your hosting service is backing up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily get back your site.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Full WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Regularly Updated

Never rely just on your webhosting service provider for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this service done for you and develop a habit of performing a full site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

• All unnecessary data and files are removed,
• All files and data are free of errors, optimized and backed up,
• All software, themes and plugins are up-to-date,
• etc …

A complete WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP site fully backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot image: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WordPress web site regularly backed up and updated. WordPress maintenance is not hard or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website. If you don’t want to learn how to do WordPress maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website is the next most important thing you must do after making sure that you still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your backup process here: Back Up, Copy & Keep Your WordPress Site Protected With Backup Creator WP Plugin

Security Measure #3 – Make Sure That Your Username Is Not “Admin”

the worldwide brute force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site administrator panels and gain access to the site by exploiting WP installations with “admin” as the username.

For reasons of website security, never install sites with the username admin. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s username is “admin”, change it immediately.

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to change your WordPress admin username here: Changing Your WP Admin Username To Another User Name

Security Measure #4 – Make Sure Your Password Is Secure

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script continually and persistently hits a username and password field with different strings of characters trying to guess the right combination that will give them entry to your site.

Unless you put some measure in place to stop the brute-force attack (see further below for a couple of simple and effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue attacking your site until it eventually gets access.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, are very easy targets for attacks. Make sure that you change your password to a string that is at least 8 characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (e.g. ^, #, &, etc).

If you have trouble coming up with strong passwords or are reluctant to set up different passwords for all of your online logins, then use a password management software tool like Roboform …

(You can use a password program like Roboform to create strong login passwords)

For a detailed tutorial for WP admin users that shows you how to change your password, go here: How To Change Passwords

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To Your wp-config.php File

The wp-config.php file contains information about your blog’s database and is used to define advanced options for WordPress.

(wp-config.php)

If hackers break into your WordPress website, they will normally look for your wp-config.php file, because this file contains important information about your site’s database, security keys, etc. Getting access to this information would allow them to change anything in your database, create a user account, upload files and take control of your site.

To protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent people finding your wp-config.php file. This requires knowing how to edit database information, move files around in your server and changing access permissions.

Security Measure #6 – Rename Or Delete Unnecessary WordPress Installation Files

Delete or rename the install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files from your server.

You can remove these files after installation, as they are unnecessary. If you don’t want to remove these files, then just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Keep Your WordPress Files, Plugins And Themes Up-To-Date

Hackers look for vulnerabilities in earlier versions of WordPress that they can exploit, including out-of-date versions of WordPress themes and plugins.

Ensure that all of your WordPress installation files, themes, plugins, etc. are always up to date.

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor that allows you to edit plugin and theme files from the dashboard.

You can access your WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor from the admin menu …

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the WP admin menu)

This allows anyone accessing your site to view and edit your WordPress theme template files, or create mayhem on your site.

To prevent unauthorized people from being able to access your WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Prevent Access To Your WordPress Uploads Folder

The WordPress “uploads” folder contains all the media that gets uploaded to your WordPress site.

Normally, this folder is visible to online users. All someone has to do to view all of the contents stored in your site’s “uploads” folder is visit the directory using a web browser …

(WordPress has an uploads directory where media content is stored)

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, this could compromise the security of your website.

Protecting your directories will prevent unauthorized people from accessing your ‘uploads’ folder and other important directories. This can be done using plugins, setting file permissions, uploading a blank index.php file (this is literally an empty file named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to get professional assistance if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use Security Plugins

A number of security plugins for WordPress are available that will address most security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing your site, protecting your site from malicious scripts, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Many WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One plugin that seems to do a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and causing irreparable damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – total security software for WordPress)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and addresses most of the security issues that WordPress users need to address.

Another great security plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender WordPress Security Solution

(Blog Defender WordPress Security Solution)

This product is a suite of WordPress security video tutorials, WordPress plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.

BlogDefender scans you WordPress site for potential security vulnerabilities …

And lets you fix these quickly …

If you don’t want to buy a premium security plugin like SecureScanPro or BlogDefender, then use various free WordPress plugins, such as Limit Login Attempts …

WordPress is a secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like keeping your WP core files, WP plugins and WP themes up-to-date, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your site to attacks by hackers and bots.

No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of web security.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users following the worldwide brute force attacks by botnets on WordPress in April 2013 …

Owners of websites based on WordPress CMS must improve at least basic security settings and implement best practices such as the use of robust passwords and the accurate management of “admin” accounts.

Pierluigi Paganini, Chief Information Security Officer, Security Affairs

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As you can see, website security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article will help keep your WordPress site protected from brute force attacks. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please seek help from a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, do yourself a favor and subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications whenever we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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